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Belgian Court Tells Google to Drop Newspaper Excerpts

BRUSSELS, Sept. 18 — A court ordered Google to remove on Monday all links to French- and German-language newspaper reports published in Belgium after an association of local publishers won a case that accused the company of violating the country’s copyright laws.

The legal action is the most recent example of the news media’s challenging the growing power of Internet news portals run by the large search engines. Increasingly, people are obtaining their news in bite-size nuggets on search engines, and advertising revenue for newspapers is diminishing as a result.

Copiepresse, an organization that helps enforce the copyrights of some of Belgium’s best-known newspapers, including Le Soir and Le Libre Belgique, sued Google for publishing summaries of articles in the newspapers along with a link to the Web sites of the newspapers.

The Belgian Court of First Instance warned Google that failure to remove all material from the Belgian newspapers from Google News would result in daily fines of 1 million euros ($1.27 million) a day.

“The Belgian story is a good sign for the news media in Europe because Belgian copyright law is very similar to copyright law right across the European Union,” he added.

Google contends that copyright law protects its service under fair-use provisions.

The case was heard on Sept. 5, but Google said it found out about the court hearing and its outcome on Friday.

“We were not able to make our case directly to the judge,” said David Collins, a spokesman for Google based in London. “We are disappointed by the decision, which we believe is flawed and which we intend to appeal.”

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Copiepresse could not be immediately contacted for comment, but in statements to journalists earlier in the day the organization’s general secretary, Margaret Boribon, said legal action against Google was necessary because the company was profiting from the work of the newspapers.

“We are asking for Google to pay and seek our authorization to use our content,” she said.

Google News benefits publishers, Mr. Collins said, by making it easier for people to find their content and driving large numbers of users to their Web sites.

“It is important to remember that we never show more than the headlines and a few snippets of text,” he said. “If people want to read the entire story they have to click through to the newspapers’ Web site.”

Mr. Collins dismissed the case as “entirely unnecessary.”

“Google has a clear policy of respecting the wishes of content owners,” he said. “If a newspaper does not want to be part of Google News we remove their content from our index; all they have to do is ask. There is no need for legal action and all the associated costs.”

Mr. Louette of Agence France-Presse said that stance missed the point. “Effectively,’’ he said, “they are offering us an opt-out from appearing on Google, but this doesn’t address the real problem, which is that they attach no value to the headlines, pictures and text from around the world that we spend a lot of money producing.”

In the United States last month, Google agreed to license content from The Associated Press for a new service. Mr. Louette said this was a positive sign for the news media. “The deal with A.P. seems to contradict Google’s stated business model, which is not to pay for content,” he said.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page C2 of the New York edition with the headline: Belgian Court Tells Google to Drop Newspaper Excerpts. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe